If you missed the chance to attend the first one, don’t worry! I’ve scheduled another Vim Masterclass at the same time next week. The EarlyBird discount price of £80 (approx. US $128) is available until the end of this week.

I’ve taught this material a couple of dozen times in the classroom, but teaching online was a new experience for me. It was more enjoyable than I dared to hope. The group of attendess got along well in the chat room, making the general ambience really positive. We had quite a few laughs! Jose Mota summarized ‘one of the main conclusions taken’ with the image macro, “MACRO ALL THE THINGS!”:

Tech setup

I used Instant Presenter to broadcast my voice and screen. Attendees could see and hear what I was doing and saying, but I couldn’t see or hear them. (With 25 attendees, that would be chaos!) We communicated together as a class using a text chat room, supplied by Talker.

Instant Presenter was pretty solid. Everybody was able to view my screen and hear my voice clearly. In the course of the 3 hour session, there were two occasions when we lost sound. The feedback from the chat room was instant (it filled with messages like “audio is gone”, or “lost sound”), so I knew as soon as something went awry. I would switch the audio broadcast off, then on again, and that seemed to fix it. It hardly took a minute, so I wouldn’t say it caused great disruption.

In my practice run, I made one critical mistake: I waited until 30 minutes before the start before sending out invitations to the chat and meeting rooms. That didn’t leave enough time for me to troubleshoot some of the technical issues that came up. Sadly, that meant some people weren’t able to attend the free class.

This time, I wasn’t taking any chances. I sent out the invitations several days in advance. I also enlisted the help of Jamie Curle, who was on hand to help with any technical issues during setup. That meant that I could start teaching on time, and Jamie would look after any late arrivals. This gave me peace of mind, and let me focus on teaching. I gave Jamie a complementary ticket for his help, and I’d say he earned it! Thanks Jamie!

I didn’t record the session this time around, but that’s something that I’m going to look into doing next time. I believe that Instant Presenter provides this functionality.

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